Ranbaxy To Keep Intl Headquarters In India

New Delhi, Sept 22: | Updated: Sep 23 2003, 05:30am hrs

Even as two-thirds of its revenues come from sales outside India, homegrown transnational pharma company Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd has decided to keep its global headquarters in the country. In fact, its spanking new global headquarter building, being set up at a cost of $9 million (Rs 40 crore) on the outskirts of Delhi in Gurgaon, will be ready in just over a year from now.

All its present offices, scattered in around five different buildings in Delhi, will shift to the new headquarter-cum-corporate office building.

Further, Ranbaxy has also initiated the setting up of its third research and development (R&D) facility also in Gurgaon involving a capital outlay of around $10 million (around Rs 46 crore).

We are setting up a corporate centre in the US in a bid to devote greater attention to the companys growing international operations in the US, but the premises in Gurgaon will be the global headquarters for the company, Sanjiv Kaul, vice-president-corporate affairs, global licensing and allied business, Ranbaxy told FE.

We are proud to be an Indian company and we have learnt a lot here. Although, the revenues from overseas operations are on the rise, we will continue to have our global headquarters in India, said another senior official of the company.

Revenues from global sales mainly the US, Europe, CIS and African markets were around 65 per cent of total sales in 2002. On the other hand, the contribution from India and Middle East is already down to 24 per cent.

The R&D III facility, expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2005, will have capacity of around 750 employees and will focus mainly on medicinal and process chemistry, biological screening, pre-clinical development, early clinical development, New Chemical Entities (NCE) and Novel Drug Delivery System (NDDS) areas.

Over the years, Ranbaxy has been laying a lot of stress on its R&D activities and its R&D budget this year is expected to be in excess of Rs 200 crore, comprising over six per cent of total sales, up from around Rs 74 crore in 2002.

The civil work for the global headquarters has already started. The new facility will have the capacity to accommodate around 1,000 people, although the companys staff strength in its various offices in Delhi is now around 650.

Ranbaxy has appointed Cushman & Wakefield as project manager for the project and Rajinder Kumar and Associate as its architects.

The global headquarters-cum-corporate office will be spread across 2.4 lakh sq feet area divided into four blocks.

The initiative, spearheaded by DS Brar and is being assisted by Sanjiv Kaul, Ameet Desai, director- M&A and Satish Chawla, vice president internal audit.